You can partially clear from the menu: Safari -> Empty Cache When you browsing a lot, Safari storing some content into his cache/files. While it is possible turn of the SafeSleep and get 4GB HDD space (or less, if you have less memory) via pmset command, i do not recommend this. The another 4GB file (sleepimage) is the space, where OS X store its memory content when going to sleep (SafeSleep - storing memory content in the file). Simply close applications and the swap will be freed. When start too much programs (or have 50 browser windows or soo) sometimes the swap increases up 5 GB or more. rw- 1 root wheel 1073741824 23 jún 14:54 swapfile5Īs you can see, in my HDD are now 5 swapfiles with total size 2GB. You will get something like the next: total 12582912 You can check their size with: ls -l /private/var/vm (In the linux or FreeBSD there are usually dedicated HDD partitions (slices) but on OS X these are files.

If your apps take more memory as you have, the OS do 'swap' parts of memory into HDD. You will get sorted size-list (in kB) for all directories under the /some/directory.Īnother check - swap file. Or, if you like command-line, run Terminal.app and enter this: du -kx /some/directory | sort -nr > $HOME/DiskUsage.txt

You can use OmniDiskSweeper to check what is occupied your space.

How to clear space on my macintosh hd